A TINY worm which thrives on rain-soaked moorland has ensured one of the bleakest starts in living memory to the Glorious Twelfth - the traditional start of the grouse-shooting season.

Few guns are expected to be fired on Northern moors today after exceptionally heavy rainfall this year has encouraged the deadly parasite to thrive in the birds.

According to Lindsay Waddell, chairman of the moorland branch of the National Gamekeepers Organisation, there will be no shoots today in Weardale, Teesdale and "very little" in South Northumberland.

Only the North York Moors will provide any sport on the first day of the season.

Mr Waddell, a gamekeeper in Teesdale for 35 years, said: "This is one of the most dismal starts to the season that I can remember. The problem is that we were not expecting it.

"But then we had three-and-a-half months of rain earlier in the year, and our last recorded figures show there were 20-odd days when rain fell in June alone."

This encourages the parasite, trichostrongylus, to thrive on heather, which the grouse eat. Eventually the worms thrive in the bird's gullet, causing it to starve to death.

Although today is certain to be a bleak Glorious Twelfth, Mr Waddell said that he and other keepers were hoping that some shoots would take place later in the season.

"We will be having a look at the moors at the end of the month," he said.

Veteran grouse counter Will Sloane, from Ireland, counted the number of North-East birds just before the start of the shooting season.

A team used dogs to flush out the birds to assess the number still alive - compared with the number of eggs counted earlier in the year.

Moorlands association spokeswoman Amanda Anderson said: "The prospects this year are pretty gloomy because of the weather.

"Around the 12th and 14th of June, when all the chicks were hatching, there was torrential rainfall. Unfortunately, when the heavy rain was flowing down the hills a lot of the chicks went with it.

"Grouse populations tend to follow the weather; sadly this year they got stung."

Gamekeeper Bruce Watson, 45, said: "It's important we leave a good breeding stock for future years.

"It will be a lower than average year but other areas will be even worse than ours."

Mr Watson said the season would probably last about 16 days - he expected shooters to bag about 1,500 brace during that time.